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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Category: Testing Date: 1999-12-20 07:30:47 Subject: Flaws Remain, But Where Is the Testing? Link: http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/yr/mo/biztech/artic... Comment: Back in 1996, I read that anywhere from 40% to 60% of a y2k repair project's resources, including time, should be devoted to testing. Today, I read that 99.7% of U.S. government systems are compliant. How do they know? They set the computer clocks forward, maybe even twice, and nothing bad happened.

So, 40% to 60% of a y2k project is setting the clock ahead, once, for maybe an hour to see what happens.

I have added few items to the Testing category this year. There have been very few stories. This story in an exception.

This is ominous:

Analysts estimate that the big computer users in the United States with comprehensive Year 2000 programs have used either tools or human checks on 40 to 60 percent of their repaired code. "Once you get outside the U.S. and a few countries, you get down to single digits in how much of the code has been independently verified," Mr. Evans said.

This is from the NEW YORK TIMES (Dec. 19).

* * * * * * * * *

. . . "Our best clients still have 40 to 50 errors per millions of lines of code," said Richard E. Evans, an analyst with Meta Group of Stamford, Conn., a consulting firm that provides information on verification tools and services. "Half of those could corrupt data or crash systems."

That adds up to thousands of potentially serious flaws for banks, insurance companies and others.

The government and most of corporate America have declared that virtually all of their critical systems will function normally when Jan. 1 arrives.

But because only a portion of most computer code is actually tested to make sure the year "00" will be correctly interpreted, even the most confident computer managers anticipate at least minor flaws.

Thus, as the repairs and testing wind up, Year 2000 boils down to one pressing question: Since stamping out every Year 2000 date problem is impossible, has the caseload of miscalculations and crashes been reduced to manageable levels?

For the real estate company, the mirage of clean code disappeared when Mr. Parwani adjusted his scanning tactics for the obscure code in which the program was written. A three-day review of close to 2.5 million lines of the software vendor's supposedly Year 2000-ready code identified about 250 flaws.

"We found at least 10 flaws that would have required several days to fix," said a programmer for the real estate company, which allowed a reporter to observe the procedure on the condition that it not be identified. "They would not have stopped business but they might have interfered with things like tracking how long rents are overdue."

While true showstoppers rarely turn up in such inspections, the number of flaws uncovered naturally raises questions about whether the government and many corporations are overstating their readiness.

The prevailing confidence is probably justified as far as the New Year's weekend goes, but the longer-term picture is murkier, according to verification-tool providers like Data Integrity. As with software flaws in general, system crashes are usually less troublesome than malfunctions that generate faults not immediately apparent.

"Less than 10 percent of the problems we find would cause something to stop," said Scott Hilson, director of technical support for Reasoning Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif.-based rival of Data Integrity. "This is more like termites than an earthquake."

The Year 2000 termites might be more dangerous than normal bugs because they are expected to peak in the first weeks of January, when many computer workers are already stretched thin handling malfunctions that occur as the old year ends and the new one begins. . . .

Based on an examination of 30 years of software records, Capers Jones, chairman of Software Productivity Research Inc. in Burlington, Mass., predicts that Year 2000 workers have introduced 7 flaws for every 100 they fixed.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Has the inevitable caseload of crashes been reduced to a manageable level?

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In addition, many computer users bought new software to retire programs that had date problems. But newly installed software tends to have more bugs than average.

Nevertheless, vendors like Data Integrity have found contracts harder to come by than analysts had originally projected. Sales for the automated tools the vendors provide have reached about $200 million, the analysts estimate, but more had been expected. . . .

Rates generally run between 4 to 10 cents a line, with a typical contract covering hundreds of thousands of lines at a minimum. "Price can be a sticking point for some smaller organizations," Mr. Burgess said, adding that Data Integrity's contracts have run from $90,000 to more than $2 million.

Analysts estimate that the big computer users in the United States with comprehensive Year 2000 programs have used either tools or human checks on 40 to 60 percent of their repaired code. "Once you get outside the U.S. and a few countries, you get down to single digits in how much of the code has been independently verified," Mr. Evans said. . . .

As Data Integrity's contract with the real estate company demonstrated, the independent verification business has not dried up even though January is just around the corner.

But many prospective clients are suffering from "Y2K fatigue," Mr. Burgess said. "At the end of October, they started saying it was too late to do anything more."

Today, the rooms in Data Integrity's office in a business park near Route 128 outside Boston are mostly empty. But it is not because the company is shriveling as demand for its main product slows. The office is a new one that the company moved into anticipating adding to its staff of 30 next year as its tools, like those of its rivals, are adapted to cleaning up other faults in software. Thanks to Year 2000, they should get at least a chance to make pitches to most of the world's biggest computer users.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/yr/mo/biztech/artic...



-- zoobie (zoobiezoob@yahoo.com), December 20, 1999

Answers

Yet, people like Flint will still say that the pessimists "see only what they want to see".

-- a (a@a.a), December 20, 1999.

Thanks for the superb article. Clear and calm and well provenanced. I just wish they hadn't left it until 11 days to go to publish it.

-- Servant (public_service@yahoo.com), December 20, 1999.

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